Yard waste comes full circle

Yard and food waste collected from many households around the Lower Mainland enjoys a second life right back in the ground where it started.

Yard and food waste collected from many households around the Lower Mainland enjoys a second life right back in the ground where it started. Many residents leave their grass trimmings and yard waste at the end of their driveway every week without giving a second thought to where it ends up.

Most of the organic waste - which includes food scraps, yard and wood waste - in the Lower Mainland gets sent to Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre, an organic processing facility in Richmond.

"We look at ourselves as handlers of a commodity or resource rather than looking at it from a waste perspective," said executive vice president Steve Aujla. "So all the materials that we have coming into our facilities from residential curbside programs for green materials, food scraps, urban wood materials, these are all resources so we're manufacturing compost."

The company has been in the composting business since 1993 and is one of the largest commercial composting operations in the region. In 2009, Metro Vancouver signed a long-term contract with Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre and the company increased the capacity at its facility in order to accommodate an additional 50,000 tonnes of food waste.

Last year, four Metro Vancouver communities - Coquitlam, Delta, Langley Township and West Vancouver - embarked on a food scrap recycling pilot project. Port Coquitlam has had a similar program in place since November 2009.

The Metro trial ended in March and board chair Lois Jackson said while a final report is still in the works, a preliminary review showed one kilogram of food waste was collected per household per week and the participation rate was between 20 and 30 per cent.

Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre receives organic waste from most municipalities in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley, from West Vancouver to Chilliwack. Packer trucks bring material either directly to the facility or to one of the transfer stations in North Vancouver, Langley, Maple Ridge and Surrey.

The material is composted in large batches. The yard waste, food scraps and wood waste are mixed together in piles with larger pieces of already composted material, which are then covered with carbon activated ash from wood sources, which helps to insulate and reduce odour.

"We're trying to create an ideal environment for the organisms for them to thrive off of, so they can multiply quicker so they can ideally break down the stuff in near perfect conditions," Aujla said. He said odour concerns are a top priority.

"Organic processing facilities, we're not in business if we're producing odour so everything we do revolves around odour control and odour protection and odour mitigation," Aujla said. After seven to nine weeks, the material is ready for the next steps.

The batch of compost is sieved to separate the finer material, which is the marketable compost, from the larger pieces, which are put back into the next batch of compost. That practice also helps speed up the composting process as the partially composted matter will bring many microorganisms with it to help jumpstart the new batch.

"They all get recycled, they get re-composted again until they break down smaller and smaller and smaller," Aujla said. Once separated, the finished compost is piled in another area of the site. The product is sold as pure compost and also gets combined with sand to make garden, turf and top dressing soils.

It's then sold in bulk to homeowners, landscapers, municipalities and other companies, which bag and sell the products under other names. The entire process takes between 10 and 12 weeks. "It's amazing those little creatures what they're doing," Aujla said. "We take a lot of credit for what's happening here but, to be honest, we're moving things around but the real work, the magic, is being done by the army guys behind the scenes - the organisms."

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